Development: How to submit patches

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Revision as of 23:51, 15 January 2009 by CityK (talk | contribs) (minor changes)
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Patch Preparation

Patches should be created against the V4L-DVB mercurial tree; see How to build from Mercurial.

For general references on how to develop a Linux kernel driver module, take a look at the Index of Documentation for People Interested in Writing and/or Understanding the Linux Kernel.

Post your patches to the linux-media Mailing List for review and testing.

Follow the guidelines in Submitting Patches (cf. jgarzik's version), including:

  • Verify best-practice kernel coding style
  • Use [PATCH] in the subject line to get attention
  • Explain what the patch does and what hardware it applies to
  • Document your work where appropriate, in the form of patches to the Documentation/video4linux or Documentation/dvb files (which ever is appropriate)
  • Add a Signed-off-by: Your name <name@yoursite.com> as a Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1
  • Fix any problems and repeat until everyone is happy ;)
  • Send the patch inline, not as an attachment

Hint: There's a checklist for patch submission

Subscription to the linux-media mailing list is recommended but not required.

The patch will be applied to the main mercurial tree. Once tested and integrated, patches are merged into a git tree by the V4L-DVB maintainer and periodically pulled by Linus.